Scaramouche eBook

CHAPTER II

QUOS DEUS VULT PERDERE

Once again, precisely as he had done when he joined
the Binet troupe, did Andre-Louis now settle down
whole-heartedly to the new profession into which necessity
had driven him, and in which he found effective concealment
from those who might seek him to his hurt. This
profession might — although in fact it did not
— have brought him to consider himself at last
as a man of action. He had not, however, on
that account ceased to be a man of thought, and the
events of the spring and summer months of that year
1789 in Paris provided him with abundant matter for
reflection. He read there in the raw what is
perhaps the most amazing page in the history of human
development, and in the end he was forced to the conclusion
that all his early preconceptions had been at fault,
and that it was such exalted, passionate enthusiasts
as Vilmorin who had been right.

I suspect him of actually taking pride in the fact
that he had been mistaken, complacently attributing
his error to the circumstance that he had been, himself,
of too sane and logical a mind to gauge the depths
of human insanity now revealed.

He watched the growth of hunger, the increasing poverty
and distress of Paris during that spring, and assigned
it to its proper cause, together with the patience
with which the people bore it. The world of
France was in a state of hushed, of paralyzed expectancy,
waiting for the States General to assemble and for
centuries of tyranny to end. And because of
this expectancy, industry had come to a standstill,
the stream of trade had dwindled to a trickle.
Men would not buy or sell until they clearly saw
the means by which the genius of the Swiss banker,
M. Necker, was to deliver them from this morass.
And because of this paralysis of affairs the men of
the people were thrown out of work and left to starve
with their wives and children.

Looking on, Andre-Louis smiled grimly. So far
he was right. The sufferers were ever the proletariat.
The men who sought to make this revolution, the electors
— here in Paris as elsewhere — were men
of substance, notable bourgeois, wealthy traders.
And whilst these, despising the canaille, and envying
the privileged, talked largely of equality —
by which they meant an ascending equality that should
confuse themselves with the gentry — the proletariat
perished of want in its kennels.

At last with the month of May the deputies arrived,
Andre-Louis’ friend Le Chapelier prominent amongst
them, and the States General were inaugurated at Versailles.
It was then that affairs began to become interesting,
then that Andre-Louis began seriously to doubt the
soundness of the views he had held hitherto.

When the royal proclamation had gone forth decreeing
that the deputies of the Third Estate should number
twice as many as those of the other two orders together,
Andre-Louis had believed that the preponderance of
votes thus assured to the Third Estate rendered inevitable
the reforms to which they had pledged themselves.